Using the
often scarce space available to them in very different political circumstances,
women’s strategies in defence of their human rights range from entryism to
internationalism.

While fundamentalists read all women’s strategies as equally
significant of betrayal of their identity, liberals outside Muslim countries and
communities - and increasingly inside too - select the entryist strategy as the
only legitimate one insofar as it matches our “nature”.

While
the women’s movement remains united in standing for the need to use
concommitantly or alternately all available strategies, for they are in
complementarity and can be reciprocal, the liberal preference strengthens, in
fact, the fundamentalist views on “Muslim” women’s ontological specificities and
would, if it succeeded, disempower and alienate women.

The first part of the strange title
of this article originates in a personal experience. In 1962, after a seven-year
bloody war which made two million victims, Algeria became independent from
French colonisation. Shortly after independence, some of us were being
introduced, as Algerians, to some Left intellectuals in Paris who had been in
favor of our liberation movement. To my utter surprise, they insisted on knowing
not only our religion although all of them without any exception happened to be
atheists, they just could not take the fact that we too professed no religion)
but also, in their own words, our tribe of origin. It was a shock and a
revelation to me that, for those intellectuals, Third World people could not do
with just citizenship: we had to bear the marks of exoticism. Our sameness was
deeply disturbing to them. Moreover it was, in their views, challenging our very
identity - a recently acquired national identity that we had fought for so many
years. The second part of my title refers to the dangerously growing trend of
precisely constructing exoticism and Otherness in the political, thus
reinforcing the ideology as well as the power and legitimacy of extreme right
political forces, both within and outside Muslim contexts, colluding with each
other.

Fundamentalism in context

Many well-meaning people, outside as well as inside Muslim
contexts, in good faith, play into the game of fundamentalists and their
identity politics. There are many forms and varieties of fundamentalism, and for
that reason I would rather speak of fundamentalisms. However, they have common
characteristics. In particular, one key element of their politics is the control
of women. This is true of all religious fundamentalisms: we can see it with the
Christian Right in the US promoting their views of morality by assassinating
medical personnel who perform abortions; it is true of Muslim Fundamentalists
promoting gender apartheid in Iran, Sudan, Algeria and Afghanistan; it is true
of Hindu BJP and RSS promoting sati (burning of wives alive on the pyre of their
deceased husbands)...

The list
will be long of other religious fundamentalists anti-women stands, and of their
hatred of women. Indeed, in a context of Islam bashing and racism, this is a
much needed reminder that “Muslim fundamentalism”, despite being specifically
singled out in the international media, is no different in that respect from any
other religious fundamentalism. Moreover, religious fundamentalisms cannot be
isolated from other forms of fundamentalism which do not focus on religion, but
do create ideological and political alliances with each other, such as
fundamentalisms based on ethnicity and culture. For religious fundamentalism is
not a religious movement, as it pretends to be. Religious pretexts, as in
Ireland, are inevitably covering up much deeper infrastructural conflicts. Those
are political movements, aiming at seizing political power, by force if not
otherwise.

As an
example, this is what the two main Algerian fundamentalist leaders, co-founders
of the FIS party (Islamic Salvation Front) had to say, even long before the
December 1991 elections were cancelled in Algeria, about their programme and
democracy:

I do
not respect either the laws or the political parties which do not have the
Qur’an. I throw them under my feet and I trample them. These parties must leave
the country. They must be suppressed. (Ali Belhadj, Alger Républicain, April 5,
1991).

Beware
of those who pretend that the concept of democracy exists in Islam. Democracy is
kofr” (Ali Belhadj, Le Matin October 29, 1989).

There
is no democracy because the sole source of power is Allah, through the Qur’an,
and not the people. If people vote against the law of God, this is nothing but
blasphemy. In this case, one must kill these unbelievers for the good reason
that they want to substitute their authority to the authority of God “(Ali
Belhaj, Horizons, February 29, 1989). We do
not accept this democracy which allows those who are elected to be in
contradiction with Islam, Sharia, its doctrine and its values” (Abassi Madani,
Algérie Actualité, December 24, 1989.)

Abhorrent of democracy, Algerian fundamentalist leaders inevitably
advocate violence against those who stand for it: “All forward looking leaders
should put all their potentialities to the service of the jihad (holy war) and
coordinate all forms of jihad, including armed jihad which is its noblest and
highest form” (Ali Belhadj, Open letter to Mudjahidin, October 2,
1994).

This
position is confirmed in international media by the representative of FIS in
Washington himself: “If the Islamic state in Algeria is not brought to power by
dialogue, this will be done by the jihad” (Anouar Haddam, Ennahar, Beyrouth,
Liban, November 1994). “It is true that we declared the jihad and we did so
according to the fundamental principles of Islam” (Anouar Haddam, El Tiempo,
Madrid, Spain, January 2, 1995).

The
incompatibility between Islam and human rights obviously does not stem from
all Muslims believers, but from Muslim fundamentalists only. Claiming that they
represent, if not the holy people by God chosen, then the purest and most
excellent race, or the most ancient and elaborate culture, these movements, when
they rise to power, impose their rules, codes of conducts, beliefs and
principles on ‘subhuman’ races, ‘inferior’ cultures and other religions.
Fundamentalisms are political movements of the extreme right, which, in a
context of globalisation, i.e. forceful international economic exploitation and
free-for-all capitalism, manipulate religion, culture or ethnicity, in order to
achieve their political aims.

Rather
than looking for examples in far off cultural and political contexts, in some
exotic third world countries, one should identify the phenomenon at one’s
doorstep. Europe had to face it recently with the ‘ethnic cleansing’ and
expansionist policy of Serbian leaders in ex-Yugoslavia.[1]

Fundamentalism is the form that fascism takes today. Like Nazism in
Germany, it emerges in a context of economic crisis and pauperisation, builds
itself on the discontent of the people, manipulates the poorer sections of the
populations, exalts their moral values and their culture (aryanity for Germany,
the glorious past of Rome for Italy), covers itself with the blessing of their
God (‘Gott mit uns’, as the SS used to wear on their belts), wants to convert or
submit the world, eliminates and eradicates their political opponents as well as
the ‘untermensch’. Far from being obscurantists and economically backwards,
fundamentalists are modernists and capitalists.

It is in this context that I shall come back to Muslim fundamentalists, women and human
rights. This particular form of extreme right movement and its specific
oppression of women should not be analyzed outside a global political frame such
as the one I indicated here.

The myth of a homogeneous Muslim world

Women in Muslim countries and communities are indeed oppressed, in
the name of religious interpretations that sustain and support patriarchy
(Statement by 15 Muslim Scholars from India, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Morocco, the Sudan, Palestine, Syria and Turkey, from Free Inquiry, USA,
October, 1997, reproduced in WLUML Dossier 19, 1997). However, there is no such
thing as a uniform Muslim World, not a unique Islamic Law (Sharia) applied
everywhere, and therefore women in Muslim societies lead very different lives,
suffer different degrees of oppression, and enjoy different rights. “Our
different realities range - from being strictly closeted, isolated and voiceless
within four walls, subjected to public floggings and condemned to death for
presumed adultery (which is considered a crime against the State) and forcibly
given in marriage as a child, - to situations where women have a far greater
degree of freedom of movement and interaction: the right to work, to participate
in public affairs and also to exercise a far greater control over their own
lives”[2].

This
diversity in itself is sufficient to counter the fundamentalist ideology of
Muslimness, as a belief, a way of life, a code of conduct, a “culture”[3] that is supposed to characterize the life of so-called Muslims all
over the world. Like all totalizations, it ignores differences of cultures,
political regimes, classes, etc..., and proposes the oppressive vision of an
unchallengeable, unchangeable, divinely defined homogeneity. But it exists
nowhere else than in their imagination.

However, by insistently suggesting its existence, fundamentalists
have managed to convince many Muslims and non-Muslims of its (virtual?) reality.
“It is often presumed that there exists one homogeneous Muslim world.
Interaction and discussions between women from different Muslim societies have
shown us that while some similarities exist, the notion of a uniform Muslim
world is a misconception imposed on us. We have been led to believe erroneously
that the only possible way of “being” is the way we currently live in each of
our contexts. Depriving us of even dreaming of a different reality is one of the
most debilitating form of oppression we suffer[4].

Differences in Muslim societies are due to three main factors.
First of all, Islam has spread, over centuries, in many different cultures all
over all continents and it has absorbed local traditions; hence Female Genital
Mutilation, although practiced by animists and Christians too in the concerned
areas, is considered and promoted as Islamic in certain parts of Africa while
unheard of elsewhere; veiling which originated in the Semitic tradition -Jewish,
Muslim and Christian alike- is now promoted the world over as the symbol of
Islam, thus eradicating traditional dress codes; the caste system, originally
Hindu, functions in Muslim communities as well in the Indian
subcontinent.

Secondly, the Qur’an and hadith have been
interpreted throughout centuries, by different Schools of Thought, and ongoing
reinterpretation is still an option to many Muslims. Like in all holy books, one can find
in the Qur’an the God of Love as well as the God of Wrath, and
many historically connoted positions as well, such as the one on slavery, for example. ‘
Be kind to your slave ‘ is the Qur’anic injunction; to my knowledge, Muslims take
it as a step forward in improving the condition of existence of slaves at the
time of Mohamed, rather than a justification of slavery today ... Such
a historical analysis can be and indeed is applied by many Muslims today to
the injunctions concerning women: “Beat her lightly“ is considered as a step forward from
heavy punishments practised in the Middle East at the time, rather than a
justification of wife beating today...

Following this line, an Algerian Muslim scholar analyses that the
function of the veil was to protect married women (by contrast with slave women)
in the time of Mohamed; hence its most appropriate modern equivalent is
education and schooling, for this is what, in our times, gives most protection
to a woman[5]. And finally, it is clear that political powers using culture and
religion choose to emphasize different elements or interpretations in both
culture and religion, according to circumstantial needs.

This
leads us to make an essential distinction between two concepts: Islam and
Muslims[6]. Islam as a religion, an ideology, a utopia, can be analysed from
the point of view of theology or of philosophy. “Islam”, in this sense, does not
exist anywhere in the material world. The “Muslims” are those who attempt to
materialize their interpretation of these ideas, i.e. on the one hand the men
and women who defined themselves as religious beings, as followers of Islam, and
on the other hand the political forces that monopolize the reading of the text
and use it as a major strategy for accessing or keeping political power.
Analyzing of their actions belongs to the fields of sociology and political
sciences. It follows suit that not all that is done by Muslims is Islamic and
that what is Islamic is even debatable and debated amongst Muslims. Islam as it
should be, Muslims as they are. Muslimness is man made, not God given.

This conceptual distinction should allow one to defend human rights
in Muslim countries without fear of being seen as anti Islam. It is an important
distinction too, for women inside Muslim contexts who fight for their human
rights. This paper exclusively focuses on the sociological and political
aspects: on what people do, be it in the name of religion. Hence we are not here
referring to Islam, but to Muslims.

In fact we are even talking here of ‘so-called Muslims’. For,
again, another important distinction needs to be made: common sense and common
language takes it that all people born and raised in Muslim families are
automatically Muslims believers, that all people born and raised in countries or
communities in their incredible cultural and political diversity, which laws are
said to be derived from the Qur’an are automatically Muslims believers. Freedom
of faith is obviously denied to people born in such contexts... No one would
dream of defining any honourable French man or Swiss lady ‘a Christian’, rather
than ‘a French’ or ‘a Swiss’. While we, Algerians, Nigerians, Pakistanis,
Fijians, Canadians, or British alike, believers and non-believers alike,
atheists and free thinkers alike, are labelled “Muslims”. Are we still talking
of faith? ‘Muslimness’ is becoming a transnational identity - much to the
delight of fundamentalists. It is becoming an unwashable ‘original sin’, a stamp
on the skin and soul of the people whose accidental location of birth made them
“Muslims”. These ‘extensions de sens’ actually constitute an insult to true
believers for whom faith is a deeply important choice in life, and to the
freedom of religion. It is, as well, an insult to the personal integrity of
those who have not chosen religion as a marker of their identity. Moreover, it
is a very dangerous political labellisation. “Jews”, believers and non-believers
alike, will not contradict me.

The diversity of women’s struggles and
strategies

Women themselves are organizing their struggles for human rights on
all these fronts concommitantly. Their strategies adequately address the issue,
ranging from working from within the frame of religion, by reinterpretation of
the Qur’an from a feminist perspective, to an entirely secular approach of human
rights[7].

Interpretation of the Qur’an has long been monopolized by male
scholars, and it is recently, a couple of decades ago, that a strong movement
was born from the ranks of feminist theologians and women’s human rights Muslim
scholars[8]. Initially, it has been seen by non-religious human rights
advocates as hardy distinguishable from, or even colluding with, Muslim
fundamentalists’ forceful attempts - now unfortunately more and more successful
– to infiltrate the human rights domain. The main distinction between these two
very different movements is that religiously inclined women human rights
advocates do not try to monopolize the field of human rights, they ally with
secularists and combine approaches, even if their main focus remains to reform
from within the religious framework those laws and practices that originated in
obscurantist interpretations of religion. On the contrary, fundamentalists’
approach excludes any other strategy and violently combat it. For them, ‘outside
religion, no salvation.

Using
the Trotskyist concept, I qualify this approach of “entryist”, for women have
invaded a field that was not theirs and have successfully initiated a dialogue
on Ijtehad (reinterpretation) which was dormant for centuries. They propose
alternative interpretations which on the one hand go back to the original text
and its semiotic roots, and on the other hand develop a field of historical and
cultural interpretation which is really new, for which they have widely used
cross cultural analysis developed by secular feminists[9]. By so doing they have deeply modified the field of Islamic
theological research.

At the
other end of the spectrum, other women - be they believers or atheists -, while
incorporating the pioneering work of new feminist theologians, do not see
religious debate as a main strategy for social change; using their
anthropologically grounded awareness of the fact that there is no such thing as
a homogeneous Muslim world and far less a transnational Muslim culture, they
have successfully pointed at the diversity of situations women live in Muslim
countries and communities around the world. Criticizing conservative or even
inhuman laws and practices, they condemn violations of women’s human rights
regardless of the fact that those may be justified, locally, nationally or
internationally, by reference to religion. Bound neither by customs nor by
religious interpretations, they state regarding reproductive rights:

In our context, these laws, policies and practices are frequently
said to flow from the imperatives of Islam. However there is considerable
variation in actual laws and policies from one Muslim country/community to
another. For example, across the Muslim world, policies on fertility regulation
range from a total ban on contraception to forced abortion and sterilization,
depending on the political interests that dominate at the moment. What is
similar across the Muslim world is the use of Islam as justification of such
dissimilar policies. In the present situation, when political forces and
ideologies that have been labelled “ fundamentalist “ are on the rise,
governments - even when they restrict such forces in the struggle for political
power- pander to them in matters relating to women. In the process, their
different political interests collude with male interests in denying women’s
human rights.[10]

They
have also pointed at all the good laws and practices that exist in different
Muslim contexts that could and should be adopted in other Muslim contexts,
without appearing to the tenants of cultural purity and nationalist isolationism
as “importing alien mores”.

Commenting on the rise of the “religious” extreme right, WLUML wrote:

We fear
that if we do not act, we may be subjected to a situation which will not
necessarily be the worst but could certainly be worse than what we have today,
where for instance:

unilateral and oral pronouncement of ‘talaq’ would be legal, as currently exists
in India,

women’s rights to vote would be delegated to men as was the case in Algeria for
two years,

• ‘zina’
(adultery and fornication, any extra marital sex) would be punishable by stoning
to death or public flogging and/or fine, and/or imprisonment, as is currently
the case in Pakistan; further, women orally divorced by their husbands
(therefore having no proof of their divorce) when they marry again can be
sentenced under ‘zina’,

• ‘zina
bel jabr (rape) would require the “eye witness account of four male adult Muslim
men of good repute” before the rapist could be given maximum punishment, as is
currently the case in Pakistan,

• women
could be tried and executed for un-Islamic behavior, for instance laughing in
the streets and/or allowing a strand of hair to fall out of the hijab, as has
happened in Iran,

•
robbery would be punished by amputation of limbs, as in Sudan and Saudi Arabia,
- women would be subjected to forcible contraception, abortion and
sterilization, as in Bangladesh,

• women
would not have the right to drive, as in Saudi Arabia,

• women
would not be able to leave the country without the written permission of their
fathers/husbands as in Iran and Saudi Arabia,

• women
would not have the right to vote, as in Kuwait,

• women
would be circumcised, as in Egypt, Somalia, Sudan,

• women
would be forcibly given in marriage by their male guardians ‘wali), as in
communities governed by Maliki and Shafi schools, - etc…

We
emphasize that none of these laws exist in all Muslim countries, nor are they
intrinsic to Islam.

On the
other hand, we would like all women to enjoy the following rights that exist in
at least some Muslim countries:

• the
right to vote at all levels, as in most Muslim countries/communities

• the right to choose their own husbands as in countries governed
by the Hanafi school, - the right to divorce, as in Tunisia,

• the
delegated right of divorce (talaq e tafweez) as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, -
the right to a share of the marital property upon divorce, as in Malaysia,

• the right to custody and guardianship of their children after
divorce, as in Tunisia,

• the
right to the marital home at least till the children are adults, as in Libya -
the ban on polygamy, as in Tunisia,

• the
right for a wife to curtail second marriages, as in Bangladesh, Pakistan,
Singapore, - etc[11]

This strategy
could not exist without a strong international linkage (between women from
Muslim countries and communities worldwide,[12] without having raised consciousness about our commonalities and
diversity; it would not exist without the clear internationalist understanding
that we women have ‘partie liée’, that the rights we gain here are bound to
affect positively women elsewhere, and that the rights we lose here may affect
negatively women elsewhere. This is well illustrated by the post Iranian
revolution spreading of their ugly form of veiling, including to those Muslim
communities which had a completely different cultural dress code and would like
to retain it, and by the recent attempts to spread FGM as a “Muslim” practice to
several countries in Asia where it was unheard of.

At a
global level, the Cairo UN World Conference on Population gave a formidable
example of the unholy alliance between the Vatican and El Azhar that tried to
stop women’s demands for reproductive rights, contraception and abortion. In
this very case, it became clear that the curtailing of reproductive rights that
women had recently faced in Poland or in ex-Democratic Republic of Germany were
indeed part of a concerted effort towards depriving women in Muslim contexts and
globally, of the same rights.[13]

This is why
internationalist women strongly advocate for universal human rights. If indeed
universalism, as it exists today, is generally highly criticized for its
implicit ethnocentricism and leaning towards so-called western values, most
women nevertheless recognize the need for, support the principle of, and work
towards a new definition of universality in human rights. The massive presence
of autonomous women’s rights organisations from Muslim countries and communities
at the UN World Conference on Women attests to the fact that women see the
urgent need not only for linkages within Muslim contexts but also with the
global women’s movement. These groups are not to be confused with
fundamentalists groups also massively present in Beijing (it would be
interesting to explore their sources of funding) as well as state sponsored
organisations.

What is
most impressive is the integration, inter penetration, cross-fertilization, and
finally the reciprocal reinforcement and mutual support of these various
strategies.[14] In most instances, far from being seen as contradictory or
oppositional, they are perceived at best as complementary and at the very least
as non-antagonistic.[15]

The construction
of Muslimness

This vision of the world is
a far cry from the one sided vision of fundamentalists for whom “Islam” is the
only possible solution, and their interpretation of it the only one to be
enforced, volens nolens, upon the world. For them, all struggles for women’s
human rights, be they from within the frame of religion or from a secular
perspective, are equally seen as betrayal. Betrayal of one’s religion: the
monolithic Islam. Betrayal of one’s culture: the imaginary transnational Muslim
culture. And betrayal of one’s community: the Umma. Women’s struggles for human
rights are seen as dangerously divisive of the “Muslim
world”.

However, if one can expect
such an analysis from fundamentalists, the collusion of well meaning liberals
and human rights advocates with fundamentalists’ ideology comes as a surprise.
What is of most interest to me is the fact that amongst these three different
but complementary strategies, only one is artificially isolated, getting most
attention, most funding, most recognition. It is seen as the only authentic one,
the best for “Muslims”. Indeed, it is the strategy of religious interpretation.
This should be of concern to all people who recognize the fascistic nature of
fundamentalist movements and the fact that, in the context of globalisation,
these movements are on the rise everywhere in the world today. In the name of
respect for the Other’s culture and religion, or for fear of being accused of
racism - for those outside the Muslim contexts -, for internatization of the
notion of betrayal - for those who, in one way or another, identify with Islam
-, there is an undue reluctance to name and condemn violations of human rights
in general and more especially of women’s human rights in Muslim countries and
communities.

Moreover there is
reluctance to acknowledge the variety of strategies that women are using all
over Muslim countries and communities, the need for this variety, their
complementary and reciprocal character, and finally to admit to the legitimacy
of them all. In short, while we claim our capacity to work as political equals,
not only racists, but enlightened people and women’s allies too, feel that we
should go for the most “Muslim” possible strategy, excluding all other
possibilities as alien to them.

This
sends us back to the image of exoticism that is so often attached to so-called
‘Muslim women’. It seems that the sense of self and identity of those tenants of
the exclusive religious strategy is shattered if and when the exotic creatures
come to close to one, if we feel free to use strategies that they thought were
theirs and theirs only. Is The Other so different, or so much the same? What are
the frightening implications of sameness for oneself....[16] By selecting one strategy, limiting the choice and
imposing/denying their “Muslim” identity to women who - in their own context, at
a specific historical moment in time - decide for other strategies, one clearly
refers to an imaginary, ahistorical, immutable image of the ‘Muslim woman’.
Indeed, this contorts fundamentalists’ ideology and dangerous political
construct of “Muslimness”. Why is this construction so well received and
accepted by such different sections of the political spectrum, indeed by almost
everyone? The notion of difference can be manipulated from several points of
view: from the point of view of racists, from the point of view of
fundamentalists, from the point of view of migrants and from the point of view
of liberals and human rights defenders. But ultimately, culturalist
differentialism and xenophilia, despite the individualistic liberalism of its
proponents exists in a vicious circle of complicity with xenophobic
racism.[17] For what is difference? Differences are produced by specific
historical, geographical and political circumstances. However, when isolated
from their context, when essentialized, referred to as a ‘nature’ - ahistorical
and unchangeable -, under whatever disguise it presents itself, difference feeds
into the ideology of racism. The promotion of difference has always been at the
heart of racist agenda. It is because the Other is defined as different,
radically different, ontologically different, that one ceases to even see its
humanity, and finally classifies it as ‘undermensch’. Racists emphasize
difference: as Hitler, the apartheid regime in South Africa, the segregationists
from the US South elaborated on difference... Right now, the extreme Right in
Europe has taken up the flag of difference, using it to argue against the
possibility of ‘Muslims’ becoming citizens. “Equal but different”.... It is not
the place to debate here on the dialectical relationship of nature and culture.
But, not surprisingly, in times when extreme right political forces are on the
rise, there is an upsurge of ‘nature’ and biology, including in feminist theory
and in science (recent emphasis on the genetic origin of homosexuality, for
instance), and the cult of difference, rather than integration.
“Communalisation” (to use the South Asian concept) of the communities, rather
than promoting the “melting pot” (indeed so often a failure and a disillusion in
practice) becomes the buzzword of human rights advocates. I presume that these
thoughts cannot be distorted to the point that they would be equated to
advocating for the eradication of cultural differences and their homogenisation
through the adoption of the Western model. I am only pointing at some of the
consequences that the present political construction of a ‘natural’ Otherness,
especially for so-called Muslims, have for women and for their human
rights.

Difference presently benefits from a conjunction of
interests which gave it a dangerous prominence. Failure to achieve equality
leads to exaltation and fantacisation of difference: politics of nostalgia of
migrants bound together by being confronted to the same racism. For racists,
social differences are seen as the inevitable product of natural differences and
thus justify exclusion. Social scientists, ‘experts’ and politologists elaborate
on ‘common sense’[18] understanding of difference and give academic credentials to
‘immediate knowledge.[19] Hand in hand with racists and extreme right political parties,
exploiting the inadequacy of social scientists methodologies and the naivety of
liberals, fundamentalists exploit the momentum to further their agenda. Within
the prevalent discourse of multiculturalism and multi-ethnicism in Europe and
North America, Muslims are seen as sharing of a religion which has been dubbed a
culture. Despite the fact that “Muslims” live all over the planet, therefore in
very different cultural set ups, despite within one specific country,
differences between those of rural and urban origin, rich and poor, educated and
illiterate, religion is seen as over determining their socio economic and
ideological positions. Culturalist Islamism assumes a cohesive homogeneity which
is by no means a reflection of the stunning diversity of social reality. Its
fantasmatic “culture” seems impenetrable to others’ culture, to historical
developments, unchangeable overtime, - dead rather than reflecting the living
history of living people.

Liberals and human rights
advocates follow this ideological line. In the name of respect of the Other,
respect of the Other’s Culture, they promote cultural relativism. They want to
redefine equality so that it fits difference. In the name of difference, they
justify practices that, for themselves, would be considered barbaric. And they
are not even yet sure, when concerned people, concerned women, challenge this
imaginary culture, that they are not witnessing cultural treason and should not,
hand in hand with fundamentalists, strongly object to it.

My
favorite example has long been the Dutch Parliament’s debate on the opportunity
to allow, on the soil of the Netherlands, the practice of FGM “for the concerned
sections of the population”. However a very good example has recently been
offered by a study on North African migrants in Belgium that led to propositions
of law which, if adopted, – despite the fact that 100% of the women investigated
unanimous protested her conclusions – a protest acknowledged by the author and
researcher - would legally establish discrimination and inequality, on the one
hand between men and women migrants, and on the other hand between them and the
rest of the population in Belgium as well. The proposed legal measures will
abolish - for these migrants and for them only - the rule of equality that is
the basis of the Constitution, by adopting amendments inspired by some of the
gender discriminatory laws or customs of their country of origin.[20]

One cannot help suggesting
a few epistemological questions: who defines culture? Are women entitled to do
so? Is citizenship restricted to men, elders, “representatives of the community”
and vocal fundamentalists? Is culture immutable and in that case in which
century are we deciding – in place of the concerned people - that it stopped
evolving? Although the habit of secluding and isolating “savages” and
“primitives” for the sake of preserving their authentic Otherness has officially
lost its credential, it seems that new forms of non-material reservations have
come to get legitimacy.

Are
human rights today so totally depoliticized?

I am not
here using this term as in ‘politician politics’, but in the sense that ancient
Greek philosophers gave it: a reflection which was also the duty of all
citizens.

All opinions, all practices
are not equally valid and respectable. Fundamentalism and fascism are not just
another opinion. It is not “tolerable”, since tolerance nowadays seems to be
seen as a cardinal virtue and the epitome of human rights, that Nazis physically
eliminated “unfits”, communists, gypsies, homosexuals and Jews, that Hindu
fundamentalists sell audiocassettes by the millions calling for the murder of
Muslims, that Afghani “Taliban” install gender apartheid, that Algerian
fundamentalists cut the throats, the breasts, the genitals of women and invoke
Islam to rape them, impregnate them and force them to bear and produce “good
Muslims“, just as the Serbs impregnated Bosnian women to force them to bare and
produce the superior race?

For all
these crimes are not accidental casualties of war, they are the logical
consequences of ideologies which clearly, in the name of purity of the race or
of the holy creed, intend to commit these crimes and justify even the intention
of committing them, - as the Fatwas on Salman Rushdie and others, known and
unknown citizens, amply prove.[21]

These
opinions and ideologies are not just another view of life. Should they be
voiced, and relayed by Human Rights organisations, in the name of freedom of
speech, freedom of opinion? We have numerous examples, since the fundamentalist
war against civilians started in Algeria,[22] of well-established Human Rights organisations giving a platform
to fundamentalists, as if their crimes did not disqualify them from benefiting
from such alliances. Human Rights organisations see them as victims of
repression by States, which is the case, at points, when States are not
negotiating with them the sharing of political power; but they ignore their main
role as perpetrators and the magnitude of their crimes.[23] Moreover human rights organisations ignore the fact that
fundamentalists’ ideology plans and justifies all these crimes, for they are
only applying their - religious? - principles when stoning to death the
adulterers and assassinating the unbelievers. The wonderful principle of freedom
of speech was not meant to help propagate hatred, calls to murder and views
which are definitely against human rights. A frightful confusion between ends
and formal means leads to encourage and support, in the name of freedom of
thought, freedom of speech and democracy, the free expression and subsequent
access to political power of the new Hitlers of our time.

At the
end of a century that sees the re-emergence of old religions and new sects, as
well as spirituality, in societies that have lost faith in transformation
towards social justice, deceived and hopeless people turn to gods and values
that many of us thought dead.

At the end of a century
that sees economic and political globalisation threaten the very lives of
people, one witnesses an unforeseen outcome of globalisation: atomized,
interchangeable individuals fearing for their lives, instinctively regroup with
their kin in order to support each other.

A North African saying
summarizes this reaction to precarity: “Me against my brother. Me and my
brothers against my cousin. Me, my brothers and my cousins against my tribe. Me,
my brothers, my cousins, my tribe against the other tribe in the next
village...”. The other side of globalisation is the fragmentation of the people.
Along the lines of religion, ethnicity or culture.

This is
the situation fundamentalisms build on and exploit. But is it not what all
fascisms also build on? Human rights, with their counter goal of universalism,
have to identify fundamentalisms as the greatest threat of the
time.

FOOTNOTES

[1] WLUML, ‘Compilation of information on crimes of war against women in ex-Yugoslavia. Actions and initiatives in their defence’, 1992.